• Custom Writing Services
  • How to Write a Research Paper
  • Research Paper Topics
  • Research Paper Examples
  • Order

Communication

iResearchNet

Custom Writing Services

Custom Writing Services
Communication » Media » Perceived Reality as a Communication Process

Perceived Reality as a Communication Process




Beyond one’s own direct experiences of the world, humans rely on communication to form impressions about the rest of reality. This fact makes communication a key to how people form their perceptions of reality. There is a rich literature grounded in communication dealing with the role of mass communication in forming individual-level judgments as well as public opinion about conditions in the world. This literature, which ranges over the areas of entertainment, news media, media effects, and various social indicators, is impressive in its breadth and depth (e.g., Bryant & Zillmann 2002).

The main models employed in research on perceived reality typically focus on inaccurate or misleading perceptions of social reality. Studies usually involve various attributions about the world that are known, relatively uncontroversial, and normatively useful for citizens to remember accurately, such as the proportion of people working in law enforcement, or the incidence of violent crime. People’s answers about these matters are then compared to media portrayals of these phenomena and the differences are calculated and explained, often with reference to media-use preferences and habits. Studies done in real-world settings will introduce various controls through multivariate equations in which the effects of demographics, education, and sometimes other variables are removed before the media variables of interest are considered. Experimental studies often rely on short-term changes in perceptions introduced by some manipulated media stimuli.




In the realm of nonfiction news and public affairs information, the basic approach is often similar, with dependent variables such as political or public affairs knowledge, perceptions of political figures or candidates for office, or perceptions of the importance or relevance of various public issues. Sometimes the studies involve the extent to which issue opinions are shown to have consistency with one another or with some elite construction of ideology (e.g., Converse 1964). Much of this work has been influenced by various normative theories of what is expected of citizens and of media (e.g., Donsbach 2004; McLeod et al. 1994). The bulk of work in the area has also been focused on the effects of media on citizens or society.

The most useful early mass communication process model was created by Westley and McLean (1957), who captured several essential elements of mass mediated information. The model focuses attention on information advocates such as politicians, advertisers, or other news sources. These sources help choose and subsidize information from the world and make it available to news organizations and individual journalists. News organizations communicate with the public directly, but are active in selecting and shaping messages that flow to audience members. The model is notable because of its emphasis on selectivity at various stages of the communication process, and also for its incorporation of various feedback loops. Various shortcomings have been voiced over the years, but the model has had tremendous heuristic value (McQuail & Windahl 1993).

Over the years a vast literature has been created regarding perceptions and mainly misperceptions of social reality. The spiral of silence is one model that tries to explain reactions to public opinion trends, which people receive from other people and from mass communication. Mass communication, according to Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, are consonant, ubiquitous, and cumulative, and so resistant to the effects of selective exposure and attention (Noelle-Neumann 1993). In the model, media convey information that includes the norms of society, various representations of the opinions of others, and clues about the extent to which these are acceptable or not.

Significant research interest has also been demonstrated in models that examine misperceptions of media content and their impact. One of the best known of these is the third-person effects model. As it is articulated by Davison (1983), people tend to perceive greater media impact on others than on themselves. The literature on public opinion has been a rich source, inspiring studies connecting media to perceptions of social reality for more than 100 years (Glynn 2005).

Pluralistic ignorance is a broad concept associated with general inaccuracy about the distributions of opinions in society. This can be shown to have a number of dimensions, including false consensus, social projection, and so-called “looking-glass perceptions.” It can also involve overestimates or even false estimates of the degree of consensus. Cultivation is another major perspective explaining media effects on perceptions of social reality. The model includes message systems analysis that examines the content of television and finds it full of violence. Institutional analysis examines the role of media corporations and their links to the power structures of society for clues about why television portrays reality as it does. Cultivation analysis links television content to public perceptions and distortions of social reality in a causal manner.

Framing has emerged in recent years as a major focus of research activity aimed at understanding how people construct reality. One advantage of this perspective is its focus on defining reality, not merely selecting some aspect of perceived reality and making it more salient in a given situation. Framing can be seen as providing causal explanations for events, as well as moral interpretations. It has been described as having two sides – internal structures of the mind and devices embedded in political discourse (Kinder & Sanders 1990; Pan & Kosicki 1993). Communication, whether conceived in terms of individual talk or in terms of the larger infrastructure of public deliberation, is central to the process of collective sense-making about public policy issues (Pan & Kosicki 2001).

References:

  1. Bryant, J., & Zillmann, D. (2002). Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  2. Converse, P. E. (1964). On the nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D. E. Apter (ed.), Ideology and discontent. New York: Free Press, pp. 206–261.
  3. Davison, W. P. (1983). The third person effect in communication. Public Opinion Quarterly, 47, 7–14.
  4. Donsbach, W. (2004). Psychology of news decisions: Factors behind journalists’ professional behavior. Journalism, 5(2), 131–157.
  5. Glynn, C. J. (2005). Public opinion as a social process. In S. Dunwoody, L. B. Becker, D. M. McLeod, & G.M. Kosicki (eds.), The evaluation of key mass communication concepts. New York: Hampton Press, pp. 139–163.
  6. Kinder, D. R., & Sanders, L. (1990). Mimicking political debate with survey questions: The case of white opinion on affirmative action for blacks. Social Cognition, 8, 73–103.
  7. McLeod, J. M., Kosicki, G. M., & McLeod, D. M. (1994). The expanding boundaries of political communication effects. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 123–162.
  8. McQuail, D., & Windahl, S. (1993). Communication models for the study of mass communication. London and New York: Longman.
  9. Noelle-Neumann, E. (1993). The spiral of silence: Public opinion – our social skin, 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  10. Pan, Z., & Kosicki, G. M. (1993). Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse. Political Communication, 10(1), 55–75.
  11. Pan, Z., & Kosicki, G. M. (2001). Framing as a strategic action in public deliberation. In S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy, & A. E. Grant (eds.), Framing public life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 35–65.
  12. Westley, B. H., & McLean Jr., M. S. (1957). A conceptual model for communication research. Journalism Quarterly, 34, 31–38.




Communication Research

Communication Research

  • Media
    • Media Economics
    • Media Effects
    • Media History
    • Media Production and Content
    • Media Systems
    • Media and Perceptions of Reality
    • Excitation Transfer Theory
    • Effects Of Exemplification And Exemplars
    • Economics of Advertising
    • Antitrust Regulation
    • Audience Commodity
    • Brands
    • Circulation
    • Commercialization of the Media
    • Competition in Media Systems
    • Concentration in Media Systems
    • Consolidation of Media Markets
    • Consumers in Media Markets
    • Cost and Revenue Structures in the Media
    • Cross-Media Marketing
    • Distribution
    • Diversification of Media Markets
    • Economies of Scale in Media Markets
    • Globalization of the Media
    • Labor in the Media
    • Labor Unions in the Media
    • Markets of the Media
    • Media Conglomerates
    • Media Management
    • Media Marketing
    • Mergers
    • Ownership in the Media
    • Piracy
    • Political Economy of the Media
    • Privatization of the Media
    • Forms of Media Corporations
    • Public Goods
    • Agenda-Setting Effects
    • Appraisal Theory
    • Media Effects on Attitudes, Values, and Beliefs
    • Cognitive Availability
    • Albert Bandura
    • Catharsis Theory
    • Steven H. Chaffee
    • Credibility Effects
    • Cumulative Media Effects
    • Desensitization
    • Diffusion of Information and Innovation
    • Emotional Arousal Theory
    • Media Effects on Emotions
    • Effects of Entertainment
    • Fear Induction through Media Content
    • Leon Festinger
    • Framing Effects
    • Frustration Aggression Theory
    • George Gerbner
    • Carl I. Hovland
    • Intercultural Media Effects
    • Elihu Katz
    • Knowledge Gap Effects
    • Latitude of Acceptance
    • Linear and Nonlinear Models of Causal Analysis
    • Mainstreaming
    • Media Effects: Direct and Indirect Effects
    • Media Effects Duration
    • History of Media Effects
    • Media Effects Models: Elaborated Models
    • Strength of Media Effects
    • Media System Dependency Theory
    • Mediating Factors
    • Mediatization of Society
    • Structure of Message Effect
    • Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
    • Effects of Nonverbal Signals
    • Observational Learning
    • Opinion Leader
    • Order of Presentation
    • Persuasion
    • Physical Effects of Media Content
    • Priming Theory
    • Media Effects on Public Opinion
    • Reciprocal Effects
    • Schemas and Media Effects
    • Effects of Sex and Pornography as Media Content
    • Sleeper Effect
    • Media Effects on Social Behavior
    • Media Effects on Social Capital
    • Social Judgment Theory
    • Trap Effect
    • Two-Step Flow of Communication
    • Secondary Victimization
    • Effects of Violence as Media Content
    • Academy Awards
    • History of Advertising
    • BBC
    • Cable Television
    • History of Censorship
    • History of Cinematography
    • History of Citizen Journalism
    • Civil Rights Movement and the Media
    • Coffee Houses as Public Sphere
    • Effects of Violence as Media Content
    • Academy Awards
    • Collective Memory and the Media
    • History of Digital Media
    • History of Documentary Film
    • History of Elections and Media
    • Electronic Mail
    • Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
    • Fleet Street
    • Fourth Estate
    • Graffiti
    • Historic Key Events and the Media
    • Illustrated Newspapers
    • Literary Journalism
    • History of Magazine
    • Music Videos
    • Nineteenth-Century New Journalism
    • History of News Agencies
    • History of News Magazine
    • Newscast
    • 24-Hour Newscast
    • Antecedents of Newspaper
    • History of Newspaper
    • Paperback Fiction
    • Penny Press
    • History of Postal Service
    • History of Printing
    • Newsreel
    • Freedom of Communication
    • Propaganda in World War II
    • History of Public Broadcasting
    • Radical Media
    • Radio Networks
    • Radio: Social History
    • Radio Technology
    • Satellite Television
    • History of Sports and the Media
    • History of Telegraph
    • Television Networks
    • Television: Social History
    • Television Technology
    • Underground Press
    • History of Violence and the Media
    • Virtual Reality
    • Watergate Scandal
    • Women’s Movement and the Media
    • Accountability of the Media
    • Accountability of the News
    • Accuracy
    • Balance
    • Bias in the News
    • Commentary
    • Commercialization: Impact on Media Content
    • Conflict as Media Content
    • Consonance of Media Content
    • Construction of Reality through the News
    • Credibility of Content
    • Crime Reporting
    • Editorial
    • Endorsement
    • Ethics of Media Content
    • Fairness Doctrine
    • Fictional Media Content
    • Framing of the News
    • Infotainment
    • Instrumental Actualization
    • Internet
    • Internet News
    • Local News
    • Magazine
    • Media Performance
    • Morality and Taste in Media Content
    • Narrative News Story
    • Negativity
    • Neutrality
    • News
    • News Factors
    • News Production and Technology
    • News Values
    • Newspaper
    • Objectivity in Reporting
    • Plurality
    • Quality of the News
    • Quality Press
    • Radio
    • Radio News
    • Reality and Media Reality
    • Scandalization in the News
    • Sensationalism
    • Separation of News and Comments
    • Soap Operas
    • Soft News
    • Sound Bites
    • Stereotypes
    • Synchronization of the News
    • Tabloid Press
    • Tabloidization
    • Television
    • News
    • Truth and Media Content
    • Violence as Media Content
    • Africa: Media Systems
    • Austria: Media System
    • Balkan States: Media Systems
    • Baltic States: Media Systems
    • Argentina: Media System
    • Bolivia: Media System
    • Brazil: Media System
    • Canada: Media System
    • Caribbean States: Media Systems
    • Central America: Media Systems
    • Chile: Media System
    • China: Media System
    • Colombia: Media System
    • Convergence of Media Systems
    • Cuba: Media System
    • Czech Republic: Media System
    • Egypt: Media System
    • France: Media System
    • Germany: Media System
    • Gulf States: Media Systems
    • India: Media System
    • Iran: Media System
    • Israel: Media System
    • Italy: Media System
    • Japan: Media System
    • Malaysia: Media System
    • Mexico: Media System
    • Netherlands: Media System
    • North Africa: Media Systems
    • Poland: Media System
    • Portugal: Media System
    • Public Broadcasting Systems
    • Russia: Media System
    • Scandinavian States: Media Systems
    • Singapore: Media System
    • South Africa: Media System
    • South Korea: Media System
    • Spain: Media System
    • Switzerland: Media System
    • United Kingdom: Media System
    • United States of America: Media System
    • West Asia: Media Systems
    • Behavioral Norms: Perception through the Media
    • Body Images in the Media
    • Computer Games and Reality Perception
    • Cultivation Effects
    • Disowning Projection
    • Entertainment Content and Reality Perception
    • Extra-Media Data
    • False Consensus
    • False Uniqueness
    • Media Campaigns And Perceptions Of Reality
    • Media Content and Social Networks
    • Media Messages and Family Communication
    • Media and Perceptions of Reality
    • Perceived Realism as a Decision Process
    • Perceived Reality as a Communication Process
    • Perceived Reality: Meta-Analyses
    • Perceived Reality as a Social Process
    • Pluralistic Ignorance
    • Pluralistic Ignorance and Ideological Biases
    • Social Perception
    • Social Perception: Impersonal Impact
    • Social Perception: Unrealistic Optimism
    • Socialization by the Media
    • Spiral of Silence
    • Stereotyping and the Media
    • Third-Person Effects
    • Video Malaise

Custom Writing Services

Custom Writing Services